The corruption of innocence is a deadly sin, because it corrupts the innocents. Better a millstone be tied around the necks of those who corrupt the innocent and they be flung into the sea, said Jesus. He really never pointed out too many particular sins attaching to them a ‘woe betide’. About the only other one was at the Last Supper when He said it would be better had Judas never been born than to betray Him.

So the corruption of the innocent ranks pretty high on the list of deadly sins.

This all comes to mind after attending my children’s dance recital last weekend. Their school has begun to drift from its wholesome moorings, as evidenced by 5-6 year olds in hula skirts turning their backs to the audience, placing one hand on a hip, and shaking their bottoms for a good 15 seconds to the hoots, hollers, whistles and cheers of the audience. It was the loudest and most raucus applause of the show. My three who collectively dance Irish step, tap, modern, and ballet were repulsed.

I was nauseated. Why the cheers for that, and why so demonstrative? It is not disconnected from the societal implosion in the Western World. Little girls don’t aspire to be “hot,” or sexually sophisticated. Left to their own natural development they like pink things and dolls, girly and feminine stuff. They want to be admired and courted, not lusted after and groped. (Left leaning types need not argue with me here. I’ve endured the stupidity for decades and am at the end of my patience with it.)

Yes, girls are different. They are softer when that ground is cultivated and fertilized. There are plenty of orthodox Catholic colleges, as well as Protestant and Mormon schools filled with such women as living testimony and stunning rebukes to the culture that sexualizes young girls.

What I witnessed on Sunday was tame compared to several of my older nieces’ recitals where girls dressed and danced like pole dancers. But the question remains…

Why?

Why do schools teach this, and why do parents pay for, approve, and cheer for it? Why have so many eschewed the femininity and physical strength of ballet for hip hop and jazz with x-rated moves danced to equally disgusting lyrics?

It has something to do with a sexual revolution that is 50 years old, guilty parents, a divorce rate over 50%, and 55 million abortions with 1 in 4 American women having had an abortion by middle age. Add to that empty churches on Sundays and we have the recipe for the cancer that is consuming the greatest, most enlightened civilization the world has ever known.

In short, the innocence of the innocents stands as a howling rebuke of their parents’ past and present sinful lifestyles. Adults, cut off from God, lost and without hope of personal redemption find it easier at some level to inculcate their licentiousness in the children than to clean up their own acts. And what a show it is.

CDC reports that 25% of American girls will contract at least one STD before the age of 19. It goes up from there. For African American girls the percentage is a stunning 48%. Girls are pressured into appearing “hot” for the boys and must endure this added burden during the normal confusion and growing pains of adolescence. The dance schools begin the commodification as early as age three.

And we wonder why for the first time a majority of women prefer cohabitation to marriage. Perhaps because we have trained our sons to value girls as sex objects and not persons with a great intrinsic dignity.

Perhaps because the boys see the parents buying the micro-shorts, mini skirts and revealing tops for the girls.

Perhaps because the boys see the parents getting breast enhancements for the girls as teens.

Perhaps because of all of this the boys no longer fear the girl’s father as they once did.

Perhaps the girls see this betrayal as normative and we have succeeded in defining their dignity down.

By the end of college, many girls have been had by boys well into the double-digits. They have been used, diseased, impregnated, and abandoned. Repeatedly. By their early twenties.

Corrupted in their own fertility and youthful promise.

Spent.

On Sunday I got a good insight into where, and how early it all begins.

We have become a wicked, wicked people.

Dr. Gerard Nadal is Science and Health Education Policy Advisor for the Bioethics Defense Fund. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology with a minor in Philosophy from Saint John's University, New York City. After his post-baccalaureate sciences at Columbia University, New York City, Dr. Nadal returned to Saint John's University where he received his Master of Science in Cellular and Molecular Biology, Master of Philosophy in Biology, and Ph.D. in Molecular Microbiology. Also a member of University Faculty For Life and the Catholic Writers Guild, Dr. Nadal is a columnist for Headline Bistro. Dr. Nadal also serves on several advisory boards, including the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer, Good Counsel Homes, and the Children First Foundation. A Fourth Degree Knight of Columbus and unapologetic Roman Catholic loyal to the Magisterium, Dr. Nadal and his wife home school their three children. He blogs at Coming Home.

Our culture will have much to account for with regard to the pillaging of innocence at every stage. The hoots, hollers, and whistle response to these little girls shaking their bottoms is a testimony to the demented mentality of our culture and is quite sickening indeed. Parents do not realize how grievous these offences are. They do not know they are in the darkest place and offering their children as sacrificial lambs to the culture of death. Let us pray for a wake-up call.